“It’s virtually certain. The only question is when. And I don’t know how soon it will the happen; the SEC has several legitimate thoughtful concerns that the industry has to overcome, and I’m confident that they will, and eventually we will see a bitcoin ETF. And it’s at that stage that I will be much more comfortable recommending that ordinary investors participate.”

The ETF saga swung dramatically in the past few weeks. CBOE withdrew its ETF application due to the government shutdown and barely a week later re-filed the application with the SEC.

The fact that new applications are subject to a 240-day deadline; and given the SEC’s tendency to make full use of that deadline, the general feeling was that there would be no ETF until the far end of 2019.

“We’ve got some serious players. Fidelity has made a major announcement in the custody issue. We’ve got Kingdom Trust and a number of other very serious players on the custody side, and I’m confident that in very short order, VanEck or Bitwise will satisfy the custody concern of the SEC.”